Most of our local soils consist of a lot of clay below the topsoil.  This clay will expand and contract seasonally, causing doors to stick and then not stick, cracks to appear and disappear around doors and windows, most of which were seasonal and fairly limited. Until now.

Because the wet and dry cycles are becoming more dramatic, their effects on your home are increasing. The primary issue is the lack of drainage in most of our older homes–both downspout drainage and sub drains (French Drains), combined with the age of our foundations systems.  Intermittent rain in reasonable amounts will often not cause issues, but in larger quantities we are seeing settlement which can be more dramatic, leading to more interior cracks, larger cracks, more water in basements and crawlspaces, and more deterioration and failure in older foundations.  Since most homeowners do not monitor the areas under their homes, these issues do not come to their attention until they see cracks or water inside the living spaces.  

And homeowners are seeing a lot more of this. When the issue is primarily surface water, the problems may pop up right away, seemingly out of nowhere, during rain events. The subterranean water issues will often increase as the rainy season goes on and the soil becomes saturated and the water table rises. Earlier this year during a particularly rainy month, I received about 50 calls in one day regarding basements that had flooded where homeowners had lived there for 30 years or more with no water in their basements.